Cuimhne
by Ready-made Prodigy
Summary: An old enemy sets out to destroy the great detective by crippling his right hand. Stapleton wants more than just revenge. He has taken Watson's memories. Holmes wants them back. Collab with PGF.
1. Prologue

**Title: **Cuimhne  
**Authors: **Double-Pro! (Ready-made Prodigy and Protector of the Gray Fortress)  
**Rating:** PG(-13ish)  
**Disclaimers:** Too brilliant to be ours, too awesome not to borrow  
**Warnings: **Some supernatural elements  
**Word Count:** 6,433  
**Summary:** An old enemy sets out to destroy the great detective by crippling his right hand. Stapleton wants more than just revenge. He has taken Watson's memories. Holmes wants them back.  
**A/N:** Originally for Challenge 012 at Watsons_Woes on lj. This was a joint project between the two of us that although brought about much grief and strife, certainly produced a fair amount of magic as well. Please read and enjoy.

* * *

_Prologue..._

London is rather nice this time of the year. The heat is sweltering, yes, but at least the city, devoid of the sprawling expanse of stinking bog, politely refrains from sending up an odour of decay and heavy miasmic vapours. It had a fog of its own, of course, stained an oil scum brown, which suited me just fine.

I have always liked the city, you see.

Devonshire had only appealed to me for its opportunity to attain a gratuitous fortune with the least amount of effort theatrically, the Grimpen Mire because it had been instrumental to my plans, convenient even. It added to the overall drama and acted as the perfect kind of escape route, one that deterred absolutely everyone from following.

The danger was a very real one however, and the Mires, those endless miles of green-scummed pits and foul quagmires interspersed with tufts of rank reeds and lush, slimy water plants that fooled one into believing there only be a few inches of blackened water rather than man-sized depths it housed in truth, had nearly claimed my life that night.

I'm sure there are many in the opinion that I should have justly died, victim to my own evil machinations. The world, however, is not so fair in its dealings. Just as a good man could be given the most gruesome death imaginable for absolutely no reason other than the horse happened to startle at the wrong moment, an undeserving man such as myself can be blessed with a random act of kindness. Rest assured I am not making some glib reference to a second chance at life, but nothing less than a gift from God.

Or should I say Gods?

_Best laid plans count for bloody nothing in the dark. My guiding wands, tipped white as they were, didn't stand a chance against the thick fog and inky blackness. I had traded my lamp for the certainty I would not be followed and it seemed as I plunged through what looked like a peninsula of safety rather than a thick clump of weeds that I had traded the certainty that I would not land in gaol for an undignified death in the moors._

_The water had smelt worse, but the taste was foul. It was up my nose and into my mouth before I could protect myself against it. I sank like a goddamn stone and though anyone and everyone would advise for a man in my situation not to struggle, I did little else besides. Rationality fled, replaced by pure determination. I would not die amidst failure. I would not drown like an imbecile. I would not be beat by a ridiculous man in a deerstalker, swooping down from London like a crow to signify my imminent downfall.  
_

_I knew the surface was close, just as I knew that the grainy, muddy bottom was far, far below. I swept my arms out in every direction, looking for purchase, desperate for any way out of my cosmically just predicament. My fingers scrabbled over bent and loosened reeds and finally, finally a solid sort of root that did not immediately give way to my desperate tugging came to my immediate notice and I would have grasped it like the lifeline it was until I felt the very edge of my shoe brush against something in the liquid sludge I had submerged myself in. It was no rock or wood set adrift as I was. No, it was smooth and presented a flat plane where it was pressed against my shoe, from the inside of my sole to the toe.  
_

_In truth I hadn't know what it was, but I knew what I wanted it to be. I had searched for it, moved to the country, had seduced two women, killed one man and nearly killed a second to have, all for the money to buy it and here it was, testing me. Teasing me.  
_

_I chose death above losing such an opportunity. Maybe that's what it takes to gain power.  
_

_So I let go of the branch with no assurance of ever finding it again and dove down just a little further into death to grasp my prize.  
_

_The Cuimhne.  
_

In retrospect, a person could question whether attaining a book bound in tanned leather and looking altogether average other than its age to the point of its pages crumbling to dust and the elaborate design the decorated the cover that somehow bolted the whole thing shut was worth such a hefty sacrifice as a moment of intense agony as the oxygen in my blood thinned and finally expired. That person is a fool. Because the book has power. I can feel it even now, thrumming against the crook of my elbow where it rests. Warm. Alive.

Men could have their science. Science tells us that that everyone eventually dies, that the body will decay, that there is nothing beyond this Earth. But I want more, infinitely more. The stories of old tell us about the old Gods and Goddesses, jealous of our mortal follies and constantly meddling with our affairs. There are stories of the heroes of old, free from age, sickness, and death. If science can't give me that, then I will turn to the old ways.

Blood, sacrifice, power, desire.

Those who want power merely require the will to take it.

And my opportunity had just exited some private residency, his jacket draped over one arm and his shirtsleeves showing signs of having been rolled up recently, though he had replaced his cuffs with precision. He carried on down the street without replacing the jacket, an understandable breech in protocol considering the heat and that his practice was a scant block away. The man was tall, perhaps not impressively, but the erectness of his shoulders and bearing made him seem so. He had brown hair that looked like a burnt gold in the sun and an easy smile playing about his lips and mustache.

He played the part of kind and gentle London physician very well, an English patriot marked by his limp that bespoke of old wars and continued bravery. I however, knew him as a different man entirely. I knew him as a nosey and ill adept inquirer into my business, who, though easily expendable, had not been worth my time to kill properly. Then he had been the man silhouetted against the waning moonlight beside the man who had orchestrated my ruin, his hand steady and his aim sure as he filled my beloved beast full of revolver bullets.

Despite the man's handiness with a gun as well as a scalpel, I knew his true use. He was Holmes' exception because Holmes was a man like me. The world at large held no interest to us and its individual inhabitants even less until some problem was presented to us, then those uninteresting individuals became inconveniences as we made our way to our solutions. Holmes had consistency, as all proper men should, but to hold one man above the diffidence he held the rest of the world in was a dangerous decision. It was a weakness.

I waited for his approach, marking each step like a clock ticking down. Just as he came into view of the alley I had secreted myself in, I bent over double into a seizing fit of coughs worthy of a plague victim. He rushed forward to aid me, predictably so full of concern and with his self-appointed task of righting me against the wall to ease my spasmodic lungs that he didn't notice that I had stuck his hand with my modified cufflink.

"Sir, are you alight? Tell me, have you had this illness long? It could be serious."

Deadly serious, in fact.

I don't know what he could have thought of me as I jerked about his grip and pressed his slightly bleeding hand against the book I held.

"_Cheannsa_," I hissed. "_Cheannsa Cuimhne!_"

Only then did I risk looking up into his eyes because surely no man could forget those of a killer. Surely the greatest detective's stooge would not forget the face of Jack Stapleton, the real terror behind the Baskerville murders, though I had gone through great pains to find clothes incongruent with the dapper man he had met some time ago and had grown a closely trimmed goatee.

_Mine_, I had said. _My Mind_.

It was Gaelic and it released a force that I had not anticipated.

Because much to my shock, the spark of recognition I had expected to see in the doctor's face died. It literally died before my very eyes as his comprehension melted to confusion, fear, and then utter blankness.

The book, the hallowed artifact I had pulled from the moors had devoured the blood it had been fed, seeping into its pages and I could see shimmering lights erupt beneath its cover, see random flashes as the pages turned the blood to ink.

The doctor crumpled, sinking to his knees, eyes wide and blown with an utter incomprehension for his surroundings.

I stared and with shaking hands opened the book, a powerful artifact of Norse legend known as the _Cuimhne_. Inside, spidery letters were still spiraling across the page, an indelible black, framed by the lighter silver that helped it take shape along the many lines.

"Where—W-Who am I?" the doctor whispered, seemingly to the open space of the alley.

My eyes darted to the very top corner of the first page of my now filled manuscript. There was no longer any shock to be had when _John Hamish Watson _appeared on the page.

Mind, I thought curiously. In my eagerness, perhaps my Gaelic had failed me.

_Cuimhne_ meant 'memory' as well.

I had meant to take control of Watson's mind, but perhaps I had the next best thing: the man himself, all neatly filed into one condensed item currently in my possession.


	2. Fall

_Tirtim gan éirí ort._  
May you fall without rising.

* * *

Someone told me once, that the world will appear different to each man, because each man sees the world as a reflection of himself, and we are all different. I did not think much of it at the time because I was comfortable in my world. It was not until I forgot myself that I realized just how hostile and alien the world could become without a personal context.

I had also forgotten whoever had told me that.

I had no reference to what I was missing. No clues or snatches of recollection left in the wake of my vanishing memories. If I clawed for remembrance in those first few frantic moments I met only empty corners and marks in the dust of where _something_ had resided. I might have believed I'd never had any memories at all, were it not for the alarming sensation that something vitally important was missing.

I did not take any notice of the now hostile world until a hand dropped heavily to my shoulder.

"Doctor, Are you quite well?"

I looked up into the face of a gentleman with calming eyes that served to ground me when I realized with horror, that I no more recognized him, than I did the alley in which I knelt. Nor had I any notion how I had gotten here or anything that had come before. My life might have just begun here on the spot in this inconsequential backstreet.

"Wha—am I a doctor then?" I gasped belatedly, staring at the long fingers gripping my shoulder in such a genial, familiar manner. "Do I know you?"

He frowned solicitously, and without leave wove his arm beneath my own to lift me to my feet.

"You are not well, Doctor. I think you should go home."

A more difficult task than he might suppose. But perhaps this man did know of me, and where my residence was, and therein would be a wealth of clues to recall my absent memories. I took his arm, lest my one stroke of providence leave me just as quickly.

"Yes, you're quite right. Could you assist me there?"

"That must have been quite some fall you took, Dr. Watson," replied he, "Do you recall nothing?"

"I am a little turned around," I muttered. The man was solicitous, but almost more fascinated than dismayed with my predicament.

"How extraordinary," he muttered, then exclaimed out loud. "How terrible for you, dear fellow. Yes, I will help you. We will take a cab, come this way. The sooner we return you home the sooner you can rest and rid yourself of this confusion."

I walked with him out of the alley into the harsh lights and noise of the street. A street with strong traffic, lined with several score of offices or shops which might have been mine. A throng of faces passed that I might have been familiar with in the past. There was no way to tell. The overwhelming flood of dismay threatened to make me sick.

"Come this way, Doctor." My solicitous friend called out for a cab and pulled me inside before calling up to the driver.

"221B, Baker Street, Westminster."


	3. Mirror

_Is maith an scathan suil charad.  
_ A friend's eye is a good mirror.

* * *

My first impression of the man who was supposedly my closest friend and 'business' partner was that he smoked too much.

He smoked too much and spoke far too quickly for a man of my condition.

For instance, his explanation of my being his 'business' partner because apparently, the title was only a nominal one. I was not officially paid for my services and he was not a fellow doctor as I apparently was, meaning we were not of the same profession, nor even belonging to those that naturally go together. From his hurried accounts and painfully succinct descriptions, I gleaned very little of what exactly a private consulting detective did.

Every time I attempted to have him clarify some point, he waved me off.

"You, Doctor, are endeavoring to go about this backwards, which is precisely the opposite direction in which we want to go," Mr. Holmes snapped more than once. "Now please, if you could just inform me of where you had originated at the moment you came into consciousness. If not the street name, then as vivid a description as you can manage."

Mr. Holmes was a friend. He knew a great deal about me. Although grudgingly done, due to his impatience on learning the details of my spontaneous bout of amnesia, he did adequately inform me of the specifics regarding my unremembered life thus far. No casual acquaintance could have told me such intimate details about my family (or lack thereof as I had been disappointed to discover), nor could a mere flatmate have known my past injuries so well as he.

In my eyes, however, Mr. Holmes had yet to prove the validity of our association.

I want to believe him, truly I do. But I feel…almost soulless and my past, my sense of self is entirely reliant on this man. He seems to be one of the only people able to give it back to me, but instead he questions me over and over, examining me with his uncomfortably penetrating gaze, and handling my persons and clothing without any inkling of personal boundaries while he searched for he found was a crushed piece of grass, dried out to the point that it was nothing more than a crumpled bit of yellow string. I was almost grateful to the thing for shifting Mr. Holmes' focus off me for as soon as the bit of foliage was discovered, it immediately garnered his full and undivided attention. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, bringing it up close to his face, though his eyes were somewhat unfocused, as if imagining the grass back in its rightful place and making fantastic inferences based on the imagined location.

"Is it an important clue?" I asked. Because surely it must be, I thought. I had been wandering in the city streets, not the country or any parks. Where then could the grass have come from if not from some mysterious assailant or the man who rescued me?

"Indubitably," Holmes replied, letting the crumpled blade idly spin between his fingertips.

"And its meaning?" I prompted further.

"That I do not know, but I will be sure to inform you when I do. In an effort to arrive to these well sought after conclusions I shall take up my pipe by the fire."

He smokes too much and Mr. Holmes has yet to prove himself as my friend.

The fact that he is lying to me does not help matters.


	4. Home

_Nil aon tintean mar do thin teanfein.  
_ No hearth like your own hearth.

* * *

It was like being told to make yourself at home in the house of a perfect stranger. Which Holmes was still.

After interrogating me and then becoming absorbed by the scraps and clues left on my person, I was dismissed from his orb and left to my own devices. I spent the majority of that evening sitting in one of the chairs before the fire trying to look inconspicuous. My companions were the off-clock that ticked spontaneously every five, or ten or even thirty seconds, and the cloying smoke from Holmes' incessant smoking. The consulting detective poured over his chemical table giving me nothing more than a cold shoulder.

I had never been more grateful to look at my watch and see that it was time to turn in. At least I was still familiar with the normal routines of everyday life, I could operate, even if I remained an empty shell at that moment.

It was only after I got to my feet that I recalled that I didn't know where my bedroom was, or if I just slept on the tiger-skin rug on the floor. Judging by the bedding around it someone did.

"Holmes."

The man grunted irritably and rolled his shoulders, as though staving off a fly.

"Holmes."

His pout assured me that his attention was grudgingly given. And that if I didn't have a good reason I would be sorry.

"Where is my room?"

From his lack of expression I assumed he didn't see the need for a room at all. So it was he that slept before the hearth.

"Up the stairs, first on the left." He turned back to his tinkering.

Well at least he wasn't lying about that

"Thank you."

I retreated gratefully, but the room that awaited me felt no more familiar than the last. It was at least tidy, and I was able to find what I needed. I went to sleep between strange sheets, and allowed Morpheus to take me away from the raw edge of emptiness pounding inside my skull.

Then morning came. And waking to my situation a second time was worse.

I slumped back on the well-worn mattress, trying to convince myself it was familiar, and almost decided to stay where I was. Only the thought of how much harder it would be to face my situation later rather than sooner made me rise, dress and go downstairs.

Holmes had never gone to bed, nor had he decided to sleep on the tiger-skin rug. He sat like a strange, plucked bird in a basket chair, his hair a tangle of bizarre plumage, smoking again.

It was apparent he had been in that position most of the night. The atmosphere in the room was absolutely intolerable. I instinctively made my way to the window and threw it open.

After getting some oxygen to my brain I realized I had not consulted Holmes on this. I turned round to find he had not so much as flinched.

The day did not improve.

Our conversation was limited, and forced when it existed. Holmes took no meals, and only answered my direct questions in clipped tones.

He remained occupied, and I was left adrift in the chaotic room that I was swiftly beginning to dislike.

By the time I was again ready to retire I wondered if I should not go mad.


	5. Lack

_Ni hespa go dith carad.  
_ There is no need like the lack of a friend.

* * *

If a lack of sleep could be considered under the category of sleeping badly, then I had not been sleeping well for three days now, which accounted for the incessant throbbing emanating exactly twenty-seven centimeters from the epicenter of my eye…

But not the ache. Although the throbbing pain in my head could be considered a correlating factor, one phenomenon did not create the other. In fact, their correlation depended on the same causation. Namely, that my friend, though present in body, was not so in spirit.

Incidentally both phenomenons, working in tandem, brought on another even less appealing sensation. That of insanity or excessive wistfulness perhaps.

Whatever it was, it succeeded in being both extremely unnerving as well as disheartening and it started with Watson coming down for breakfast and spotting me, crouched in the basket chair looking quite decidedly like a raven perched on its roost.

"Is there…anything I could assist you with, Holmes?" Watson asked, frowning and hesitant as if he wasn't sure the inquiry was welcome or if he wanted to initiate it at all.

_"You look rather worse for wear this morning. Are you feeling alright, my dear fellow?" _Watson didn't ask, but could be heard all the same. The question was accompanied by a near symmetrical frown, though the two were not equivalent by any standard except in looks.

"Not at all," I replied.

"I see," both Watsons echoed, but where one took two steps and stopped short, the other continued forward with a fierceness of will that rivaled my own. I had no idea that such a thing as 'aggressive kindness' existed in the world until I met John Watson, who proved benevolence could be a force to be reckoned with.

The ghost of hands descending gently upon my shoulder and brow was a sensation so familiar that I registered it just as surely as I saw Watson physically sit at the breakfast table.

"Will you be joining me for breakfast, then? Or some tea, perhaps?"

_"You are eating breakfast, Holmes, and that's final. Would you like me to prepare your tea the way you prefer of just have some of mine?"_

"Leave off, man. There are things I can do perfectly well by myself," I said.

"_Holmes, if you aren't going to properly look after your health, then I might as well do it for you. Now, sit down and eat something or so help me I will switch all the labels on your chemistry vials."_

"As you like it, I shan't disturb you any further."

The angry expression on Watson's face was layered with another, one no more mild, but originating from an entirely different source and that difference is what shattered the illusion altogether. Not even my extremely exhausted brain or the wild ache in my chest could revive it. The reality broke it clean through.

My Watson was not _this_ Watson. _My_ Watson liked coffee in the morning and Darjeeling with milk at tea time. This Watson was unwittingly drinking Earl Grey and I haven't the heart to correct it. There was no need anyways. As soon as I solved this case, my Watson would return and things would go back to the way they were supposed to be.

Substituting my pipe in place of Mrs. Hudson's eggs and hash, I contemplated the facts of the case once more.

After an hour or so, the landlady herself appeared to take away the dishes, sparing me only a sniff of disapproval before turning her attention to the doctor.

"I'm very glad your appetite has returned, Dr. Watson. I know that you're still having trouble remembering, but is there anything in particular that you would want for dinner?"

"You must have read my mind, Mrs. Hudson," Watson said, his face blossoming into his typical smile, which had become so uncommon these past few days. "I was thinking that perhaps, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, you could lay out a variety and I could possibly re-learn my favorite dishes."

"Ha!" I exclaimed, and the sound was a painful even to my own ears. "That is a supreme _waste_ of time. Preferences are based off of associate memories or habits. As you have none of those, Watson, such an experiment would be doomed to fail," I heard myself say with asperity.

_Chicken curry_, I had wanted to say. Chicken curry with the full regiment of spices rather than the quarter amount normally demanded by the usual tastes of English gentleman. Watson would probably request it every day if he wasn't half as polite, knowing as he did that the dish very often burnt my delicate English tastebuds to cinders.

But I didn't say it because it wasn't fair to this Watson. And at any rate, as soon as I solved this case, my Watson would soon forgive me.

Determined to make this a reality, I pronounced my appearance already disreputable enough for my intentions, found one of my other, less fine jackets and set out from Baker Street, unwitting avoiding a row that would have prevented my Watson from making a drastic mistake.


	6. All Else

_Thar gach neile…  
_ Above all else…

* * *

It turned out that these days the price of dangerous and powerful magical artifacts ran as high as an arm and a leg.

Literally.

It had cost Holmes the use of his left arm and a considerable chunk of his right leg for the book that supposedly housed the entirety of Watson's memories. His left arm hung limply at his side, paralyzed from an extremely violent blow to his shoulder by a comically large cudgel. It probably would have remained humorous if not for the giant who wielded it so effectively. As for his leg, it seemed that Stapleton had not quite given up his unique hobby of breeding monstrously sized dogs. For the rest of his days, Holmes would not bear something so inconspicuous as a bite mark, but a crater.

However, Holmes refused to allow himself anything but a smile.

For a pound of flesh and a dramatic irony that led him to be crippled in the same places as his friend, Holmes had the _Cuimhne_.

It was worth it.

Because no matter how loudly his rational mind screamed that magic had no place in the harsh light of reality, when he held the book in his hands, he could smell ship's tobacco and could almost hear a gentle murmur which reminded Holmes of the many times Watson had kept a nighttime vigil over his sickbed.

The idea of supernatural powers also became more amenable as soon as he opened the book to a random page and read: _You may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavored to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavoring to unravel it.  
_

Nothing he had ever encountered felt so very much like a soul.

And thus he limped with all the force he could muster. Back to a friend, whose memories he had willingly paid for, and to a life he infinitely preferred to what he had endured during this almost brief time of crisis.

If he had bothered to examine the last few paragraphs that were at that very moment still writing themselves in silver-black ink, he would know that his efforts were steadily progressing to becoming too late to be received.

Back at Baker Street, John Watson stood on its threshold and with a resigned air of finality, took up his hat and coat and quickly acquitted the place that had been deemed his home.

He had little to regret except for an eccentric companion that had so far lied and dismissed him at every turn. So limited was their conversations, that it seemed Holmes did little else than keep secrets and snap at him.

Watson simply couldn't bring himself to be with a companion he could not trust, especially as vulnerable as he had currently become.

He would leave Holmes and Baker Street. It seemed he had no other choice left to him.

_Re: Problem_  
_Package has been intercepted. Most likely rerouted._  
_-T.E._

I crumpled the telegram in my hand with indulgent enmity. Against my many preparations, Holmes had obtained the _Cuimhne_. It galled me to admit it, but the detective had worked much quicker than I had anticipated. I had expected him to be occupied with the doctor for a few more days, at least!

I had left the _Cuimhne _in good hands. I had meant for them to merely watch over it while I set my trap so that the detective would meet his death by my hand when he came rushing in to retrieve the one thing that could cure his friend, but Holmes had jumped the gun and unhappily survived. My only consolation was that I had the foresight to plant a Third Eye to oversee the start of my operations.

My plans lay in ruins, unless I could get to Watson first. Unless I could drive the knife where it would hurt most. I had been generally apathetic about the doctor's role in this affair before now, but Holmes had forced my hand.

Crossing Regent's Park on foot was the fastest way from my hotel to Baker Street and allowed me the benefit of being free from cab drivers remembering a man hailing them at eight o'clock at night and dropping him off at the residence of a recently murdered victim, perhaps two if I felt up to it.

Perhaps I have mentioned that odd little working of the universe that allowed kindnesses to be paid to the undeserving because hardly twenty minutes into my walk I came across the doctor sitting at a bench in a virtually deserted section of the park, valise in hand.

He looked up with some surprise, which quickly became relief.

"Why sir, how glad am I to see you once more!"

"Not at all, Doctor," I replied, smiling. "The pleasure is all mine."


	7. Lesser Choice

_Ragha an dhiogha.  
_ The lesser of two evils.

* * *

"Watson! Get away from him!"

On impulse I did step back from the man I had been pleased to see only a moment ago. Traversing Regent's at that time of night was lonely, and dangerous. Friendly faces, even if they weren't remembered, were a welcome sight to me, especially after Holmes' cheek.

"Holmes?"

My strange companion emerged around a bend in the path. And my anger died a little as I saw he was limping badly, his breath came in heavy gulps of air.

He had a revolver in hand and raised it to point at Stapleton. "Get away from him." he barked at both of us and I shied back.

"Holmes, are you mad!"

"I feared something like this," Stapleton muttered. "Beware of him, Doctor."

"Nonsense," Holmes growled, "You're not fooling anyone you deranged lunatic. Watson, come over here."

"I will not move while you are pointing that revolver!" I cried, hoping to jolt some sense into the madman. "I may be confused but I'm not going to let you shoot someone."

Holmes blinked, still breathing heavily. He raised the gun, but only to swipe at his eyes. They were doused in a stream of blood coming from a cut on his forehead.

"I'm not going to shoot him," he declared in a softer voice as though the idea had never occurred to him.

"Then put the gun down."

Holmes shook his head. "Come here, Watson, and take it from me. I will only give it up to you."

And he held it out quite willingly.

"You aren't going to trust him to give it to you!" Stapleton snapped, halting my impulsive step forwards.

I ignored him, not because I distrusted him, but he was a distraction. I began to walk slowly towards my former roommate. My hand outstretched to take the revolver.

He looked like a madman. Not only was his face covered in blood, but his right leg as well. His trouser leg was in shreds. The colorless tint of his skin attested it was all his own blood.

"Don't listen to him, Doctor." Stapleton hissed behind me. I heard the scuffle of his boots on the path as he started after me.

In an instant Holmes had straightened the gun in his hand, and the man behind me cried out in pain as the gun snapped and filled the air with cordite.

"Holmes!"

The detective dropped the gun at once.

"It's only his leg, Watson, a graze at most."

"You shot an unarmed man!"

"Oh I have no doubt he is armed, my friend." Holmes muttered darkly, reaching into his coat and freeing an odd bound manuscript from its folds. "He would have no qualms about killing you, to keep you from getting to this."

Holmes extended the book towards me.

It looked a very ordinary thing, bound in leather, if very old. And yet the way Holmes held it out with serious consideration writ all over his suffering face, he might have thought he was handing me the world.

"What is it?"

"It is you." He said eagerly, "Your thoughts your memories, the sum of who you are; a journal for your whole life, my dear fellow." Over the last few days his expression had been shuttered. Now he appealed to me openly, practically thrusting to volume at me. He wanted very badly me to take it.

When I did not reach for it, his face fell somewhat

"Why should Stapleton want to keep that from me?"

"Because he stole it from you; he used it to steal your memories."

Behind me I heard Stapleton give a high, scornful laugh, thought it died off in a pained moan.

I sighed deeply, wondering if I had two injured madmen on my hands. One looking as though he would collapse any moment, the makeshift bandage on his leg was a disgrace. "Holmes, are you talking of _witchcraft?"_

"Take it, Watson." Holmes took another step, stumbled, but kept the book extended in one shaking hand. "Even if you don't wish to open it, even if you think I am mad. No one should possess this save you. Take it."

I took it, and for a moment both our hands were closed over the volume, while Stapleton groaned and fretted behind me.

Holmes smiled, his lips grey, and relinquished it to me, falling back to sit on the grass beside the path.

I examined the warm leather in my hands, marked with his bloody fingerprints.


	8. Epilogue

_Epilogue..._

"I knew it was Stapleton from the start, of course."

"From that insignificant bit of grass, I presume," I replied, dropping into my armchair with a sigh of utter contentedness and for the first time in many days, we sat together once more as friends.

"You presume correctly," he replied, eyes dancing with more than mere approval at my deduction. "Though it was hardly insignificant," Holmes remonstrated a moment later. "Its singular features and the composition of the plant it came from pointed very distinctly to it originating in Devonshire and more specifically, the Grimpen Mires. Insignificance is in the eye of the beholder."

I laughed and I knew by the slight change in his countenance that he was glad to hear it. The understanding of his habits and ways of speech, which had been so lost to me, were once more reinstated and I planned to laugh at him still further.

"Holmes, don't you think that this time around, perhaps it was not wholly wise to keep your very significant deductions to yourself? The situation was quite dramatic in itself without you adding to it."

"That was not my intention at all," Holmes sniffed, only slightly affecting an air of offense at this picture of himself.

"And what pray tell was your intention?" I questioned bemusedly.

"There was no easy way to explain that our previous association had brought us in contact with a shrewd and unscrupulous murderer whose revenge upon me had most likely fallen to you by proxy. I did not wish to impart you with any further anxiety."

What Holmes was trying to say was that no one in their right mind would trust a man who was responsible for sending murderers at their door and Holmes feared that by revealing the cause of the amnesia being the result of my association with him, I would immediate seek to sever that connection.

"Given my condition, lying to me was not the best way to engender trust, Holmes," I said, though not without warmth.

"I was doing the best I could, given the circumstances," Holmes replied, his expression darkening.

This experience had left a shared pain between the two of us and it was hard to shake off so soon after its climax. Holmes chose to employ his talent for changing the subject and although it was as abrupt as ever it was not unwelcome.

"It was Stapleton's predictable aliases and perhaps his conceit in forming them that allowed me to so easily track him and with it, the odd vein of his obsession with the Old Religions. Norse mythology mostly, with some tokens of druid traditions. During the course of my research, the _Cuimhne_ quickly caught my notice and perhaps where Stapleton misinterpreted, I was able to discern in no small part to my witnessing its affect on you. Your memories being so completely gone without injury or mental trauma…" he trailed off, staring hard into the fire.

"It's shocking to think that under different circumstances, we might not have been friends at all," I said.

Holmes smiled and shook his head, grey eyes rising once more to meet mine. "It would be shocking, if at the last moment you had **not** opened the book with only my word to go on. In the end, you chose to side with me even though you had no earthly reason to do so. If that does not make us friends, I have no inkling as to what would."

"Perhaps it is giving someone the choice to walk away from you, even if the result would cause you unimaginable pain." Our eyes locked for a moment, as they so often did, and all the thanks we could possibly want were conveyed through them. "At any rate, our friendship seems to be built on a much stronger foundation than mere memories."

I thought for a moment Holmes would scoff at my romanticism. Instead he tipped his chin up in mild consideration before uttering a single phrase that was as smooth as a french lullaby, but with the gravity of a much older language.

_"Ni ceart go cur le cheile."_

The words were completely foreign to me, but they rang true all the same.

_There is no strength without unity.__  
_

* * *

_**A/N:** All the headers and the above phrase are in Gaelic, the language that inspired Tolkien's elvish._

_So we didn't win the Challenge 012 competition, but we put forth a very good effort and are very proud of the outcome of this collab. Beware our future works together._


End file.
